In this activity, we invite kids to focus on something that is always around and always changing—the weather! With the help of printed weather cards and their imaginations, kids can go on a “weather walk” and practice adjusting to the weather.
The Guide
Step 1: Notice the weather.
Head outside with kids and take a moment together to notice what is happening with the weather where you live. What does the air feel like? Smell like? What do kids notice about the light and shadows? What do they notice about the temperature?
If you can, lie down on the ground and look up at the clouds. What shapes do kids see in the clouds? Are the clouds moving fast or slow?
Step 2: Introduce the play scenario.
Ask kids what types of activities they like to do in this type of weather. Wonder, what would happen if the weather suddenly changed? How might we adjust our plans and our activities?
Step 3: Take a pretend Weather Walk!
Grab the printable Weather Walk cards and, if you'd like, a few props kids can use for pretending (e.g. umbrella, blanket) and head out on a Weather Walk in your outdoor space. Every so often, stop and pick a new card to look at together. For each card, wonder: "How could we adjust to this type of weather?" Then, act it out together!
To support play, model and/or suggest some play ideas. For example:
Wind: Enjoy bed sheet parachute play or twirl with wind flags.
Too Hot: Use a leaf as a fan, make cooling wind with bed sheets, turn a bed sheet into a cool cave.
Too Cold: Turn a bed sheet into a cozy blanket and pretend to sip warm tea/cocoa.
Thunderstorm: Drape bed sheets over a table, chairs or other objects and take shelter!
Sunshine: Turn a bed sheet into a picnic blanket or beach towel.
Rain: Turn a bed sheet into a shelter or a puddle.
Snow: Pretend to put on snow gear and turn a sheet into a sled.
Want more ideas like this? Try some of these DIY activities to inspire kids to make discoveries about the weather and the air around them:
The weather is always shifting, from day to day, and even from one moment to the next. If we can adjust their focus and stay playful with the weather, we can help them stay safe and still have fun—no matter what the weather brings! Pretending to go on a weather walk is also a great way to help kids stimulate multiple senses and develop creativity, problem solving skills, and persistence.
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People use critical thinking skills to gather information, evaluate it, screen out distractions and think for themselves. These skills help us identify which knowledge to trust and how to use new and old knowledge together to decide what to believe or do. People also use these skills to develop arguments, make decisions, identify flaws in reasoning and to solve problems.
Also referred to as “higher-level thinking,” critical thinking draws on many other skills that matter (e.g. focus/self control, communication, making connections, and even empathy). Kids won’t fully develop critical thinking until adolescence or even adulthood, but remarkably there is lots that you can do to help your kids build its foundation during preschool and early school ages.
How do little kids build a base for such a complicated set of skills? A key building block to critical thinking is the ability to develop theories about the world and to adjust your theories as new information becomes available. Kids can practice this as they attempt to solve mysteries or actively wonder about why things are as they are. As a family, the more you ask questions, make predictions and allow kids to take active part in discovering the answers to their questions, the stronger you make their foundation for critical thinking. As kids grow out of the 3-to 5-year-olds' freewheeling relationship with reality, you can also train them to question information and see the inconsistencies or flaws in certain ways of thinking.
Why does it matter?
In a world that is increasingly saturated with media messages and where information comes from a wide range of sources that differ in quality, critical thinking is more important than ever. Kids need this skill in order to be informed and empowered consumers, to either suggest or evaluate new solutions to complicated problems, to make decisions about our society and its governance, and to form the beliefs that guide their personal and professional lives.
Focus & Self Control
Category:
Thinking Skills
What is Focus and Self Control?
We think of self control as a child’s ability to focus on something in such a way that maximizes learning. In order to do that, they first need to direct their attention and focus on a single thing. They also need to discern which information around them is most important and deserving of their attention. Thirdly, they need something called “inhibition.” Think of inhibition as the ability to control impulses, block out distractions and continue attending to the same thing. Focus, discerning and inhibition all require rather fancy brain work and are thought to be part of the “executive functions” or the set of cognitive processes involving the prefrontal cortex that help us manage ourselves and the environment to achieve a goal.
Why does it matter?
Our world is full of distractions, more today than ever. Kids who are in any learning situation need the ability to control their impulses, block out noise and attend to the person, objects, events, or discussions that are central to learning. As classroom teachers, we saw that kids who did this ruled the classroom. As outdoor educators and parents, we know the same holds true outside of school.
But don’t take our word for it; the research is impressive. It turns out that these executive function skills are closely tied to success in the classroom, higher level education and life beyond school. Experts like Adele Diamond of the University of British Columbia have shown that, “If you look at what predicts how well children will do later in school, more and more evidence is showing that executive functions—working memory and inhibition—actually predict success better than IQ tests.” Although these skills are difficult for young children and don’t crystallize until adulthood, the more kids practice them, the better at them kids become.
Imagination
Category:
Thinking Skills
What is Imagination?
Imagination is defined in many ways, but one we like is, "the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality." This is no small task to little kids, and yet young childhood is a time in which imagination is developed more than any other. How does imagination develop in childhood? Through an increasingly sophisticated life of make believe.
We all likely have a sense of what we mean by make believe or good old "pretend play." How do experts define it, though? To some, there are different types of make believe that vary in sophistication and make pretend play different than other types of play. For example, kids may use objects to represent something else (e.g. a block becomes a cell phone). Or, they may start to give an object certain properties (e.g. a doll is asleep or a tree is on fire!). Still yet, they may themselves take on the properties of someone or something else.
From there, pretend play evolves into acting out scenarios or stories, those getting increasingly intricate as imagination develops. As kids' pretend play grows more sophisticated, these stories come to involve not only the creative use of objects, but multiple perspectives (e.g. good and bad guys in the same story), and/or the playful manipulation of ideas and emotions (e.g. I am sad, but then become happy after I save the village from certain doom).
Why does it matter?
An ever growing body of research substantiates the many benefits of pretend play including the enhanced development of: language and communication skills; self-control and empathy; flexible and abstract thinking; and creativity. These are the skills that will help kids balance emotions, form healthy relationships, work effectively on teams, stay focused in school, be successful at various jobs and solve the problems of an increasingly complicated world. An individual's creativity in particular, both requires and is limited by her imagination.